Here There be Dancing
by 23rdHunter
Summary: In which Elsa and Anna meet at a festival and proceed to, both literally and metaphorically, dance around each other. Au.
1. Viennese Waltz

Chapter One: Viennese Waltz

* * *

The Arendelle town heritage festival was in full swing when Kristoff, with Anna riding pillion behind him, pulled Sven into a motorcycle space near the square. Once parked, Kristoff dropped his helmet onto the seat, "I'm gonna grab some food tickets and hit the stalls, later Anna!" and disappeared into the crowd.

Anna put her helmet behind Kristoff's before walking around the edge of the square, grinning at the baskets overflowing with flowers hanging from the flag posts, rows of stalls set up just for the festival selling anything that could possibly be connected to Arendelle's heritage, and at all the people. And oh the people!

A pair of little old ladies, wrapped in colorful shawls and scarves and sitting down so they looked more like tiny mountains of purple and green clothing than women sat at the first corner she came to, their expressive eyebrows and hand gestures clearly revealing what they thought of every rude boy and underdressed girl in sight.

Anna smiled and walked by. Full length dresses did not pair well with motorcycles, so she wore leggings under a patterned green and yellow sundress, all over brown lace-up boots. Eyebrows went up, hands pointed and gestured up and down; one humphed and the other chortled. Oh, one of them wasn't a lady, she was a little old man. He was a little old man? Maybe not so little either, but hey.

Anna spun around and leaned toward them. "So! What do I rate then? Three outa five? Four? C'mon, tell me! Ooh, what about him? Look at that shirt! I don't think rainbows and polka dots should mix, do you?" Shocked, wide eyes met hers, then they scrunched up into a maze of happy wrinkles as the pair laughed and waved her closer, inviting her to take part in their lighthearted judgmentalism.

Anna jumped over to an empty basket nearby and turned it upside down to use as a seat. Sitting between the two, she had a perfect front row seat, complete with running commentary thanks to her two new friends, for the festival's main event: the dancing.

* * *

Elsa flicked yet another bead of sweat from her temple. Why had she let her pride choose her outfit? Elsa knew she looked good in her fringed black shirt with the royal blue and purple patterning, especially paired with her black jeans, diamond stamped boots, and royal blue gloves. Right now she looked like an absolutely stunning puddle of sweat.

Rather than glare at the sun she turned her ire to Kai, who cheerfully waved at her from the podium as he spoke into the mic and introduced the next round of torture- a traditional Arendelle folk dance that maybe five people in the whole crowd knew and that the rest would gamely attempt to various degrees of fail. As Elsa was jerked into yet another too-wide spin by her current partner, she mocked her favorite employee under her breath. "You should get to know the people here, get a feel for them," he said, "I need someone who actually knows the dances and looks good on the dance floor, you're my last chance," he said.

She firmly adjusted the hand wandering ever closer to her posterior back to her waist. It seemed the people of Arendelle were getting a much better feel of her than she was for them. "Thank you for the dance," the small, chicken-like man in military dress and a toupee bowed stiffly and bounced off – or at least his toupee bounced- before she could respond.

A sharp squeal drew her attention to Kai, who was tapping the mic. "Now we have a short break for the band- aren't they doing a fantastic job everyone- to grab a drink, then we'll move on to the competitive portion of the dance…."

Elsa stopped listening once she registered the word "break" and started moving toward the stalls lining the edge of the square, intent on getting some shade and rehydration. Honestly, most of the festival had been fun, the first person she'd danced with was a crazy old lady who kept chortling and making gestures about Elsa's "masculine" attire before she left to go sit with a friend who seemed to be communicating via semaphore with her eyebrows. As the day had worn on though, she ended up dancing with more lecherous creeps- not just men either- than fun loving dancers, and between them and the heat, Elsa just wanted to melt her way back home, where she could recover in peace. She paid for her water and sagged against one of the stall's support poles. This was a horrible day and she was definitely going home.

The band played a few preliminary bars. A beautiful Viennese Waltz. Elsa's body started dipping in time to the beat. Sighing, she moved toward the center of the square. After this song, if she could find a decent partner, she was definitely going home.

* * *

"May I have this dance?" Anna shot backward off the end of her basket seat. Legs loosely hugging the basket and arms spread wide she looked up at a bright blue glove thrust in her general direction. She looked further up. The glove was attached to a woman. A woman who had just asked Anna to dance.

"No, no that's not reall-" the traitor couple she'd been bantering with each grabbed one of her elbows and shoved her upright. "How did you...? Are you really old ladies or are there, like, trolls hiding under those layers because…" they pushed her forward and she swung her arms out to catch her balance. One of her hands fell, slammed actually, neatly into the hand of the waiting dancer. She stepped back, gently tugging Anna forward, and together they joined the other couples on the dance floor.

Anna had really been trying to avoid this. She could dance, sort of, but it always felt like she and her partner were just slightly off tempo, dancing to the same song, but with different versions of the choreography. Anna usually had the rough draft. The dancer swung Anna in a smooth ninety degree turn that left them in open position, standing beside each other, facing the backs of the next couple. She took Anna's other hand and tried to gently spin her around so their hands would be in the right place, but Anna kept spinning a bit too long, and bumped into her side.

"Sorry."

"It's fine."

The music, which had been doing its slow introductory thing, began playing in earnest. The woman slid them into closed position, her hand resting high on Anna's waist, Anna's own on the dancer's shoulder, and started forward into the waltz. Anna glanced up at her, then down at her feet "one-two-three, one two three, one two three one…" She stepped right onto the woman's foot, made her stumble, and lost her balance, which she regained by grabbing harder at the woman's gloved hand. The glove slipped off.

* * *

Elsa didn't know what had happened. One moment she'd been dancing with the charming young woman who'd been sitting by her first partner of the day, and it had been going well. Not well in the normal sense, their dancing had been terrible, but she'd been enjoying herself and her partner had a tiny grin on her face as she counted off the beat in a quiet mutter that made Elsa glad. Then she stumbled, her glove was gone, and she was touching the young woman's bare hand.

Shock and adrenaline raced up her arm. Elsa gasped and started back, almost pulling away, but her partner gripped Elsa's hand tighter and pulled her back, saying "Whoa there, sorry about your glove. Hey, it's okay, I'll get it when the song's over, no problem." So Elsa kept dancing. It felt different, electric somehow. They shifted closer together as they waltzed. Elsa raised her left arm, the ungloved one, and started moving her right to guide her partner into a series of spins. The woman spun out as though an extension of her arm, continuing through the motion four times in perfect step with Elsa, returning to closed position with a snap that felt audible, the touch of warmth from her hand searing through the cloth at Elsa's shoulder like a full beam of sunlight. Their eyes connected, neither of them bothering to look down or around to avoid stepping on toes or other dancers.

* * *

Kristoff, resplendent in his sea-green tunic, one arm weighed down with a sack of food, waved at his grandparents, wrapped in a zillion layers like they always were when outdoors, sitting in the square at the edge of the dance floor. He hadn't known they'd be here or he'd have introduced them to Anna. They didn't wave back, so he came closer, "Bulda, Grand-Pabbie, what's up?"

"Shush dear." Bulda reached up and pulled him down so he could see where she pointed.

"Look who's dancing with the Queen!"

"Queen? Who queen? Wait is that Anna? Anna's dancing, who is Anna dancing with? Wait how do you know Anna?" Kristoff tried to sit on the basket Anna had sat on earlier, but it rustled ominously under his weight, so he settled onto the cobblestones at Bulda's feet instead. A few yards in front of him Anna swept around the dance floor in the arms of a gorgeous blonde.

"Is that the queen?" Pabbie answered his last question by nodding distractedly.

Anna and the blonde made a striking pair on the dance floor. As he watched, the woman abruptly changed directions, dancing clockwise instead of counter. Anna moved with her, leaning back against her arm, skirt flaring out and spinning back in. Most of the other women took this opportunity to gaze around the square, their heads following their leaning torsos, but Anna's face was hidden as she kept it turned toward her partner. They completed a circuit clockwise when the music hit its crescendo and Kristoff's jaw dropped. Had the woman just lifted Anna into the air? And again? Anna didn't stumble at all as the woman lifted and lowered her twice, then twice more in time to the music, arms at her waist, Anna's on the woman's shoulders. They moved into a series of spins, ending with the woman's lead hand high over her head as she guided Anna completely around her like the moon orbiting the earth.

He'd danced with Anna before. She was always distracted, pushing him into moving at a different pace, daring him to let her spin him, starting a game of bumper dancers, taking the lead and moving them away from angry victims of bumper dancers… the reasons he didn't dance with her anymore went on.

Seeing her dance like this was definitely a first.

* * *

Anna couldn't take her eyes off her partner. It felt like she was reading the woman's mind through her eyes, like her beautiful baby blues were telegraphing her footwork, like the dancer's white-blonde eyebrows forecasted the next change in direction. Anna could feel how her partner's pulse raced through the artery at her wrist, could see it beating at her temple. They moved as one. They… were stopping?

"… and here's our winning couple for the Viennese Waltz! I know one half of this amazing pair already, but we'll let them introduce themselves." A microphone is thrust into her face.

Breathing hard, she pulled out of the dancer's arms. When had they gotten so close? Anna grabbed a loose strand of hair and drew it behind her ear, then leaned back toward the dancer, this time to take her hand in a firm handshake.

"I'm Anna. Anna Andersen."

"Elsa." The dancer- Elsa, who had yet to look away from Anna, replied distantly, dazedly. "Elsa Arendelle."

"And I'm impressed!" A great green wall with arms and a blond head suddenly stood between her and Elsa.

"My name's Kristoff, how'd you get Anna to dance like that?" The wall moved to one side and Anna could see Kristoff had Elsa in a one-armed hug, which was probably the only thing holding her up, if her shocked face and limp limbs were anything to go by.

They'd forgotten about the man with the microphone. He'd turned off the microphone and was staring at Elsa, who removed Kristoff's arm from her person as she snapped at the flabbergasted MC. "Kai! How'd I win the competition, I can't even compete! It would be cheating!" The man grinned.

"The crowd voted. You and, ah, Anna, was it? Received the vast majority of votes. The prize is dinner for two at The Ugly Duckling."

"The Ugly Duckling's not in Arendelle, it's over an hour away, in Corona. How does that even make sense as a prize for an event at Arendelle's town heritage festival?"

"You approved it."

"I shouldn't have, what was I thinking?"

"That it's the best place in the area for a romantic dinner between dancing partners?" As Kai said this Elsa's eyes flicked back to Anna, who'd moved next to Kristoff and had been watching her and Kai like they were a tennis match. Elsa turned beet red.

"Well, I, um… that may be so, but there are, um, mitigating circumstances. Like I just met you!" Elsa suddenly turned back to face Anna.

"I just met you! It's too soon for a, for well, for The Ugly Duckling."

Elsa stood straight and tall, hands clasped before her as she spoke, but her eyes were wide and her voice wobbled a bit as she spoke. Anna had never seen someone look so composed and act so nervous at the same time. Anna really wanted to get to know her better.

"We could go as friends! It'd be fun! You can sit there looking gorgeous while I sit there looking like, well me, and we can get to know each other!" She thought for a moment.

"Wait, why would it be cheating if you won?"

"And why did Bulda and Grand-Pabbie call you the queen?" Kristoff added.

Kai broke in again. "You don't know who she is? This is Elsa _Arendelle, _the direct descendant of Idun and Agdar Arendelle, the founders of this town. Arendelle may be a township and not a monarchy, but the founding family is still very involved in the running of things."

Another voice sounded in behind him. "And that's almost exactly how she's described in her bio for the Arendelle Association's Board of Directors, where she serves as President. We call her the queen, though, because she presides over the board like one."

Anna and Elsa turned to stare at the owner of the voice. It was the little old lady who was neither little nor a lady. Elsa moved closer to Anna and whispered, "I thought he was a woman."

"So did I at first, I mean look at all the shawls, all I can see of him are his eyebrows!"

"But that's Pabbie, he's on my board. I see him every week and I still spent all day thinking he was a woman!"

They laughed, Anna openly and Elsa with one hand covering her mouth.

"Oh! Your glove!" Anna lurched forward. The glove lay just off the main dancing area, looking dusty and trampled. She grabbed it and came back, wincing as she tried to clean it off, brushing at it and slapping it lightly against her skirt.

"It's a little um, wrecked. Sorry."

"No, I like it better this way. It," Elsa held the glove gingerly between pointer finger and thumb, turning it this way and that, noting the brown dirt stains, possibly permanent creases, and the footprints, "has character now. I could tell a story with this glove."

Together Anna and Elsa watched Kai and Kristoff talk with Grand-Pabbie, until eventually Kai remembered he was the festival's MC and was due back on stage.

"Elsa, the Polka section's up next, would you mind helping with that?"

"Oh, no not at all." Kai's words caught up with Elsa moments after her response. She groaned.

"It seems I'm needed elsewhere. Goodbye Kristoff, Pabbie," she paused a moment to stare once more into Anna's eyes, "Anna. I'll be seeing you." The music started up again, and Elsa was gone.

* * *

AN: So yeah! Anna and Elsa dancing. Hey, did you know that back in the days when audiences threw rotten food at bad actors, some of them were actually trying to poison the actors? Like, they thought tomatoes were poisonous, but they threw rotten tomatoes at the actors' heads anyway.

This is the part where you all decide whether or not to throw poisonous food at me. But hey, it's internet food, so I can take it *braces self*

Also: sorry if you got this twice, the formatting got messed up when uploading, so all my line breaks and stuff were eaten.


	2. Rest

Chapter two: Rest

* * *

"_It seems I'm needed elsewhere. Goodbye Kristoff, Pabbie," she paused a moment to stare once more into Anna's eyes, "Anna. I'll be seeing you." The music started up again, and Elsa was gone._

* * *

Sigh. "That's it, she's gone." Anna had seen Elsa dancing the Polka with a few different people, mostly women, but a few men too. Glimpses here and there as the crowd parted. She'd watched intently as the tango section started, but hadn't seen Elsa with anyone. Nor for any of the sections following that. Now the part of the evening Anna usually liked best had started, freeform, but right now she was too busy complaining to Kristoff, Pabbie- who was actually Kristoff's grandfather, what?- and Kristoff's grandmother Bulda, formerly known as the little old lady with the hand gestures, about how Elsa hadn't given her any contact information. Breakdancing to the Electric Slide was going to have to wait.

"I mean there's a meal for two at The Ugly Duckling with our names on it, hers and mine, Elsa and Anna, but now we can't go. I don't know where she lives, or her phone number, or where she works, or anything. How am I going to find out if it's True Lo, um," Anna coughed. "If it's truly good, the food at The Ugly Duckling." Kristoff was trying to look sympathetic while he balanced a Polish sausage and mug of locally-brewed beer on his knees. Anna stole his beer. And blinked.

"Kristoff! This is a doppelbock, you don't drink it with sausage. And it's warm, yuck."

"But the guy said it's a man's beer, strong and good! And it is!"

"Well yeah duh. Here, take this," Anna pulled her wallet from her boot, "give me that," She stole his sausage, "and go get a blonde ale for the sausage, and some smoked ham or cheese for the doppelbock, or no, something chocolate for the doppelbock, like truffles or fudge or cake, and we'll share."

Thus ordered, Kristoff went off to procure the foodstuffs. It sounded like he'd called her a snob as he left, but that couldn't be right. He must've been calling her a slob. Eh.

Bulda patted her arm. "Things will work out Anna dear. You'll see her again."

Pabbie added, "Maybe I can get her phone number when I see her at the board meeting tomorrow."

Two pairs of eyes, one black and one blue, stared at Pabbie.

"What?"

* * *

"I hate you." Elsa panted. "You're fired." Elsa was hiding in the stairwell of the parking garage, yelling at an imaginary version of her least favorite employee. After she'd danced with five different people during the Polka, she'd ended up near the stage. She'd wanted to talk to Kai about the dinner, about Anna, about how she couldn't go to the dinner because then she'd see Anna again and she couldn't do that because she found Anna _attractive_ and she didn't know how to talk to people like that. Nice people, people who were funny and charming, who followed her lead so well it was like they read her mind, and who were just slightly shorter than her and had auburn hair and blue eyes and were named Anna. She'd wanted to tell Kai all that so he could help her panic, but then he'd gone and announced a tango. A _tango_.

Elsa could dance the tango. She could even pull off some of the fancier moves, for leading and following, but she wouldn't. Learning to tango with her father had been awkward enough, having to help him teach it to overconfident students in his community dance class, while she was an overconfident college student herself, had been more so. Tangoes, she'd found, brought out the inner sexy monster in even the most stolid of dancers. It was unnerving, and she didn't like it. People shouldn't be able to go from being ordinary fun-loving dancers with warm eyes and red faces to being stern-faced with eyes trying to burn you up from the inside out, just because someone changed the rhythm of the music. She'd instituted a policy in college of only dancing the tango with people she either didn't find attractive at all, or who she was dating. That had backfired when it turned out many of the people she didn't find at all attractive, which was most of them, found her rather much so. Her current policy was to not dance the tango. Ever.

Looking at the people, at least seven of them, converging on her position by the stage, it didn't seem as though they knew that.

So she'd run. And now she was hiding in the stairwell of a parking garage.

"So fired, Kai."

* * *

Anna pulled off her helmet and tucked it under her arm. Leaving your helmet on the bike during daylight was one thing, but leaving it out overnight encouraged unpleasant surprises. She'd walked out at four a.m. once, so she could start the ovens going at work, bleary-eyed and probably too sleepy to safely ride a motorcycle anyway, only to find her helmet already inhabited. By a bat. No, her helmet now had a designated place on her dresser, next to her riding gloves and a precariously stacked pile of textbooks.

She and Kristoff had hung out at the festival for another hour or so, enough time for any buzz caused by the beer they'd drunk to be safely gone. Then they'd hopped on Sven and headed back to their apartment.

"You have classes tomorrow?" Kristoff dropped the contents of his pockets onto the table and started shucking his shirt, eager to get out of his dusty clothes and into comfy pajamas.

"Ack!" Anna spun away. "Nah, not on weekends, Kristoff. I work though. Could you like, change in your room please? This attempt at seduction has been unsuccessful."

"Wha… oh!" Red-faced, the blond stopped unbuckling his belt and shuffled quickly into his room. The door slammed. "Sorry!"

Anna went into her own room to change.

"Hey Kristoff!" She shouted, "Should I ride my bike to the meeting tomorrow or ask Pabbie to pick me up in his car?"

"Ask Pabbie to drive you, they dress up for those meetings, and besides, weren't you hoping to go on a date with this girl? No one wants to go on a date with someone who's dirty and smelly!"

"Physician heal thyself Kristoff! Take you own advice sometime! But anyway, do you have Pabbie's number so I can call him?" She finished changing and went back into the common area. Kristoff stepped into the room a moment later.

"Can we stop shouting? I think it's… Oh, good." Kristoff handed Anna his phone. "Third speed dial."

She called Pabbie and arranged transportation. Oh gosh this was happening. She flopped onto the couch. Going to the festival had been her idea, she'd wanted to watch all the dancers, smell the flowers, drink the beer and just soak in everything that was Arendelle, condensed into one day-long event. Meeting Elsa had not been part of the plan.

She was embarrassed that she'd nearly mentioned True Love in front of Kristoff. Again. He'd been there to pick up the pieces when Hans broke up with her.

Hans lived in the next building over. They met at the pasta shop and bar under his flat. She'd been his experiment, his last shot at not being gay. They dated aggressively, spent as much time together as possible, consumed one another. Hans had done his very best to fall in love with her, and she'd fallen for him just as hard as he wanted to fall for her. But he hadn't.

Kristoff had put both her and Hans back together, actually. His family of love experts left him well prepared for dealing with heartbroken and spasmodically depressed roommates and neighbors. She loved everyone, and it hurt when they didn't love her back. Hans, it seemed, didn't love anyone, including himself.

"I'm going to run over and check on Hans, Anna, make sure he ate something today."

"Okay."

Anna curled up into the couch cushions. Hans had been bad, but she was over him now. And Elsa wasn't at all like Hans. Actually, no, Anna didn't know that. She didn't know much about Elsa at all, really. Just that she was tall, gorgeous, composed, a brilliant dancer, and that she was president of Arendelle Association's board of directors.

But that would change. When Anna went with Pabbie to the meeting, she would see Elsa, and she could ask her out to The Ugly Duckling, she could figure out if Elsa was another Hans, and maybe find out what the blonde woman's lips tasted like. Wait no, bad idea. Slow and steady Anna. Slow and steady.

* * *

Elsa raced toward the castle. It was dark out, and even though Castle Arendelle had excellent security she still preferred to be inside it rather than on its grounds this late at night. The castle was mostly a museum, a historic building that had undergone beautification and was opened up regularly for weddings and other major events. Elsa lived in the same wing her ancestors had, but without the benefit of servants, or any human company at all. The wing was closed off from the public section; even on the rare occasions Elsa was home while tours were conducted, she couldn't hear them. She punched in the entry code to the side door and pushed her way in. There, she was promptly knocked over by a snowy white beast.

"Marshmallow, gå av!" Obeying instantly, the Great Pyrenees got off of Elsa and stood next to her, his drooling face filled with delight at her presence. Getting Marshmallow had been her first big decision after coming to live here on her own two years ago. He gave her someone to come home to, and in return she provided for his needs. They both cared for and protected each other, it was a mutually beneficial relationship. The fluffy white dog's tail thumped against both sides of the hallway as he waited. Elsa wiped slobber off her face with her sleeve, stood, and grabbed his toy from a shelf next to the door. A high shelf. Squeak squeak. Marshmallow quivered.

"Okay boy, nede!" Marshmallow fell to the ground and the ground shook.

"Sitte!" He sat. Elsa raised the toy over her head and paused.

"Ready Marshmallow?" The dog leapt up and strained forward, eyes on his favorite squeaky toy, a beautiful toy tiara.

"Hente!" Elsa threw the toy as far as she could down the hall, and sighed happily as she followed Marshmallow at a more sedate pace. Home at last.

* * *

"Yoo hoo! Anna, it's a good morning, yeah?" Anna's boss Oaken waved as she stepped into the shop. She'd worked at Oaken's since her first year of college, so nearly four years now. They did a little of everything. Supposedly Oaken's was a grocery store, but it was more like a trading post. They had food of course, but also clothes, climbing gear, farming equipment, homemade suntan lotion, and on weekdays Anna started up the ovens and they had fresh baked breads and pastries. Oh, Anna smiled, they also had a bar that served beer, wine, and coffee. That had been her idea.

"It's a great morning boss!" Since Anna wasn't taking her motorcycle to the meeting, Kristoff had taken her to work on Sven. Whenever Kristoff bothered to wake up before noon, he made breakfast. She had no idea why the guy was still single. His carrot and raisin muffins were fantastic. She'd dithered over what to wear for so long that Kristoff had tried to help. Had helped. He picked one outfit, she went with the other. Perfect.

But for now she was stuck under the navy blue apron of an employee at Oaken's.

"Business has been slow, but then I think most people are sleeping in after the festival yesterday. Did you go to the festival Anna?"

"Yes! Wasn't it amazing? Oh, the flowers, the whole square smelled like lilacs. And the food! Oh, Oaken, they had this beer, a doppelbock, and these dense little chocolate cakes with fudge frosting on them, and they went so well together! We have to start carrying them!"

"Haha, well Anna, if you can learn to bake those cakes, I can see about ordering some doppelbock. Do you remember the name of the supplier?"

They spent the rest of the morning pouring over local brewery descriptions and online cake recipes. Anna spent the afternoon helping customers and doing inventory. Sunday was a slow day, but Monday usually more than made up for it, so it paid to be ready ahead of time.

Finally, Anna hung up her apron. Pabbie was already at the shop, enjoying a mug of hot coffee.

"Let's go Anna, we should leave now if we want to be appropriately early for the meeting."

So they went.

* * *

AN: And there's chapter two. I think this should wrap up within six chapters. Maybe.


	3. Meeting

Chapter three: Meeting

* * *

"_Let's go Anna, we should leave now if we want to be appropriately early for the meeting."_

_So they went._

* * *

A steady thrum filled the air as Elsa moved methodically around the grounds. Chaos gave way to order as she swept over overgrown grass and weeds, leaving uniformly even grass in her wake. There was something about maintaining the castle grounds herself that Elsa loved. Maybe it was the chance to control dangerous powers. She gunned both throttles of her zero-turn mower, sending it shooting across the grass at nearly fifteen miles per hour, grass clippings blowing behind it like an extravagant green veil.

Because she could, Elsa lightened up on the right throttle and sent the mower into a tight right-hand spin, then she switched throttles and jerked into a left-hand spin. She continued this dizzying pattern of figure-eights up to the duck pond, where she slowed, carefully inching her way around patches of wildflowers and cattails that might be hosts for bird nests or other wildlife.

A turtle slid from a rock into the water, sending tiny waves radiating out across the pond. Maybe she loved it because she never was never able to see things like this, wild things living free lives, when she lived with her father. Studies and dancing had been her entire life, and she'd hated it. Ballet every morning before school, tutors for every subject she struggled with, recitals every quarter throughout elementary school, then piano lessons and concerts in high school. Her father wanted her to be the well-rounded, educated, elegant young lady her heritage warranted.

But she didn't want that. A mass of duckweed and bladderwort had clogged up the pond's overflow drain. No harm done yet, but if the drain wasn't cleared before the next rain, the pond would spill over its borders and wash away any life hiding in the nearby undergrowth. Elsa pulled back on both throttles 'till her mower stopped completely, and turned off the engine. The drain sat five feet from the shore. It was time to get muddy.

* * *

"So what's going to happen at this meeting anyway? What does the Arendelle Association _do_, besides plan out the town heritage festival?" Anna sat in the passenger seat of Pabbie's car, a completely adorable 1937 Ford Sedan painted rust brown and straw yellow, with a moss green interior. She'd been afraid to touch it before Pabbie told her there wasn't anything she could damage on it that he couldn't replace, repair, or repaint.

"Well, imagine a tiny village of one-hundred people. There's room in it for one mayor, one police officer, and one town busybody. The busybody takes up so much of the mayor and officer's time that they give him a job. He has to write down all the social norms everyone follows, the rules that don't officially exist, like don't sit next to someone on an empty bus, and don't paint your house orange if it gives your neighbor a headache. This person writes down the rules, and the mayor gives him a budget to help along the social norms. He gives discounts on people's favorite paint colors, and plants flowers in the median, that sort of thing.

"Over time the village grows, and one person can't do everything anymore. That's what the Arendelle Association is. Arendelle's busybodies corralled in one convenient location, given a job that's actually useful." Pabbie seemed proud of his explanation.

"But aren't you on the board? You're calling yourself a busybody?"

"You think I spent all day yesterday sitting in the town square with my wife so I could mind my own business? I'm the worst of the lot, which is saying something because Elinor, the CEO, is a real bear when it comes to matters of governance."

"What about Elsa? What's she like as a board member?"

"Hmmn. Well according to the Arendelle town charter, so long as the Arendelle family line persists in the town, the family is permitted one seat on the board. For, oh, I'm not sure how long, the family lived outside of Arendelle, and the board was one member short. We used to call in the gardeners and janitors to help break ties.

"When Elsa came back a few years ago, we didn't really know what to expect. She took her place as a regular board member, not President or Treasurer or any of the key positions. But for most of us, the Association is something of a hobby. It's not like that for Elsa. She went in there that first day with the entire charter memorized. When Eugene Fitzherbert, the Treasurer, proposed building an island resort on Lake Fjord, Elsa quoted, chapter and verse, the reasons why it was not allowed.

"She gets things done. Elinor sweeps in with her annual goals and standards, Tiana keeps those goals practical and realistic, Eugene performs money magic, Merida reminds us that things could be much worse than they are now, Eudora helps us recover from Merida, Ms. Gothel provides an elderly perspective, Kai represents the apartment complexes, and by this point we're hopelessly gridlocked. Elsa cuts to the heart of the matter, clearly states what needs to happen, and then does it. We voted her board president in the first election after her arrival, and she's held the position ever since."

"She sounds, um, a bit intimidating." Cold, really, Anna thought. Boardroom Elsa didn't sound much like dance floor Elsa.

"Well why don't you find out for yourself?"

"… Huh?"

"We're here."

* * *

By the time Elsa finished hosing muck and pond scum off herself and her beloved lawn mower, she was behind schedule. No time for dinner, she had just enough time to change and leave straight for the board meeting. They were due to discuss yesterday's festival, as well as any proposals the board put forth. Eugene was almost certain to have a few, as was Merida.

She arrived later than usual, just in time to take her seat as Ms. Gothel began recording the minutes.

"Good evening everyone, I hereby call this meeting of Arendelle Association's board of directors to order. Let's begin by establishing a quorum. Vice president Tiana?"

"Here."

"Ms. Gothel?"

"Aren't you a sweetheart? If I'm not here, how are these minutes being recorded? Just kidding, dear, go on."

"Treasurer Eugene?" Elsa went down the list, ending with her usual closing statement. "Is there anyone not listed who ought to be recorded in the minutes as present?"

"Ooh, me! Anna Andersen, citizen of Arendelle, here!" The room grew cold. Up until then Elsa hadn't actually looked up from the transcript of last week's minutes in front of her, reciting each part of the time honored opening remarks from memory. Now she looked up. Seated directly across from her, at the typically unoccupied place at the end of the table, was Anna.

Anna looked… dashing. She wore a magenta sport coat over a light blue button-up and a patterned black vest. The table hid her lower half from view, something for which Elsa was both thankful and disappointed. Anna wasn't smiling; she looked concerned actually, which seemed odd. Anna had been smiling in some way throughout the entirety of their brief acquaintance. Elsa opened her mouth to ask what was wrong, only to hear Kai ask for her. She waited for a response.

"Elsa, what's wrong? Are you alright?"

Oh, Kai had been speaking to her. Why was he worried about her when Anna was over there frowning? Also, why was the room getting darker around the edges? Suddenly Elsa remembered how to breathe.

"Sorry! Sorry everyone. I'm just feeling a little lightheaded. Now, um, if we've concluded the opening remarks…?" Ms. Gothel nodded, "let's move on to approving last week's minutes, and then on to presentations, discussions, and action items. Tiana, if you could?" Tiana nodded, and Elsa fled to the restroom.

* * *

Elsa ignored her. Of all the potential outcomes Anna had come up with last night, this was not the best, but not the worst either. Best outcome scenario had Elsa jumping up onto the table and into her arms and Anna got to spin her around dramatically like in the movies. The worst had Elsa calling security to remove this redheaded stalker. She'd done neither, and Anna needed to figure out how to interpret Elsa's actions.

When she'd announced herself, Elsa had looked right at her for a whole minute, without blinking, turning paler every second. Then the blonde had gasped, turned bright red, said something business-y, and left. She returned several minutes later and continued from where Tiana left off. Elsa conducted the remainder of the meeting with her back straight, hands in her lap, head pointed down toward the table so she couldn't see anyone, especially not Anna.

Eventually Anna stopped paying attention to the meeting. Did she still want to ask Elsa out? It seemed clear that her presence at the meeting made Elsa uncomfortable. What if she was coming on way too strong and scaring her? Anna, caught up in analyzing their interactions, didn't notice when the meeting ended.

"Anna?" Pabbie tapped her shoulder. "Anna, the meeting's over. If you want to speak with Elsa, now is your chance."

"Right, ah, thanks Pabbie." She stood and looked around. Elsa was nowhere to be found. Frustrated, Anna threw her hands up and stalked outside. This wasn't how things were supposed to go! "Elsa, if you'd just _talk_ to me!"

"Anna!" Oh. Elsa was outside, not ten feet in front of her, hands clasping her elbows as she watched the sunset. Anna hadn't realized it was so late. Or that she'd spoken aloud where Elsa could hear her.

"Elsa! Hi! Um, what I meant to say, was, that, um…" Okay, deep breaths, real words. She could do this. "Will you, well I was wondering if you'd eaten! Food! Would you like to eat food, at The Ugly Duckling, because we have that free dinner there, um, with me?"

"I'd love too!"

Wait, what? Elsa looked as shocked as Anna felt. She stared wide-eyed at Anna, both hands clapped over her mouth as though they could shove the words back into her throat.

"Really?"

Elsa didn't move. She stayed with her hands over her mouth, her only sign of life her expression, shifting from shock to something like delight. At that moment, Anna pictured how the character in Edvard Munch's _The Scream _would look on Christmas morning, faced with its heart's desire. That was how Elsa looked. Then she nodded, firmly, continuously, until Anna felt it necessary to reach out and stop her.

"Hey, that's, that's actually great! Wonderful, even. Wow, I was so not expecting you to say yes. Um, when? That is, when would you like to go? To eat?"

Elsa's stomach took that opportunity to complain about having missed dinner. Anna watched Elsa's arms slowly lower to her sides, hands tangled together. "Maybe, if you're not busy, right now?"

* * *

AN: Wow, okay, that's chapter three there, yup. Next up: The not-a-date that's really totally a date.


	4. The Date?

Chapter Four: The Date?

* * *

"_Hey, that's, that's actually great! Wonderful, even. Wow, I was so not expecting you to say yes. Um, when? That is, when would you like to go? To eat?"_

_Elsa's stomach took that opportunity to complain about having missed dinner. Anna watched her arms slowly lower to her sides, hands tangled together. "Maybe, if you're not busy, right now?"_

* * *

"But first, I need to talk to Kai. Just for a moment, excuse me." Elsa left Anna standing there, figure framed by the sunset, a bemused smile on her face.

"Kai! Hi, yes, Kai, if I could speak with you for a moment? Now?" The man had been having an animated discussion about cooking styles with Eudora, but she didn't have much time; Anna might get impatient and leave, and that would be horrible. But then Elsa wouldn't have to try to talk to her. But then she would never know what Anna looked like when she was thinking hard about something, or if Anna liked reading by fireplaces. But then…

"Actually, no, take your time, Kai."

"No, I think I ought to come with you, Elsa." He knew her well enough to see through her avoidance techniques. They took a few steps into an empty hallway.

"Kai she asked me out." This was how their relationship worked. Her father had been friends with Kai as children, and they'd visited infrequently over the years, so when Elsa moved back to Arendelle he'd started checking up on her, like a papa dog who'd adopted a kitten, or the uncle she never had. He invited her over to eat dinner with his family, and sent his youngest over on his bicycle with soup when she was ill. He was the only person in Arendelle she knew well enough to really open up to.

"What? Who?"

"_Anna!_ She came to the meeting tonight so she could ask me out to The Ugly Duckling, so we can use that free dinner we won. Kai I don't know how to do this!"

"Oh, this is good though! She seems like a nice girl, it's about time you went out and met someone your own age, had some fun! That's why I asked you to help out at the festival, so you could meet people. Go on, she's waiting. Go, go!"

Kai made shooing motions with his hands and, when those failed to move Elsa, spun her around by the shoulders and gave her a light shove toward the building entrance, where he could see Anna sitting on a bench through the glass front.

Elsa, feeling only very slightly bolstered by her talk with Kai, braced herself and went back out to Anna.

* * *

They took Elsa's car. She drove a silver Honda CR-V, probably a first-generation model, given its boxy appearance.

It was a good car, Anna conceded privately. Safe, comfortable, very traditional. It was weird, though; Anna had never seen a car look simultaneously so used and unlived in. There was nothing personal in the car, not even a candy wrapper under the seat or some pennies in the cup holder. But the car wasn't clean. It was dusty, there was sand and gravel and leaves on the dash mats, and the exterior hadn't been washed by anything but rain in months, Anna guessed.

The car didn't fit Elsa, she realized. Anna watched how the woman skillfully maneuvered out of the parking lot and onto the main road. Elsa went the speed limit, but she took turns too tight, and stopped faster than the Honda liked. This clearly wasn't what Elsa usually drove, and Anna really wanted to ask about that, but she decided to wait until they were at the restaurant.

* * *

The outside of The Ugly Duckling reassured Elsa with its quaint wooden features and painted accents, the rocking chairs scattered across its welcoming front porch. It looked like a cozy place to relax and eat. Thus disarmed, she stepped into a sea of noise and chaos.

The first thing she noticed, besides the warmth of Anna as she entered and stood at her back, was the overabundance of large, loud men. Then the smell hit. The men sat drinking pilsners of beer on tall stools at cocktail tables scattered across the room, or on shorter stools along the long wooden bar that ran three quarters of the way across the back wall. Raucous music played from an electronic jukebox, and perhaps a third of the men were trying to sing along. Elsa winced at the discordant sounds and couldn't bring herself to step any further into the room.

Anna brushed by her up to a small wooden podium, where she said something to the small, bearded man waiting behind it.

"Ah, yes. Congratulations! Right this way please." The man leered up at Anna in a manner that belied his polite words and grabbed two menus from behind the podium.

"Come on Elsa, this way!" Elsa let Anna hook their elbows together, and followed when she pulled them after the waiter.

"Do you know why this place is called The Ugly Duckling?" The man asked them as they moved toward the back of the room.

Some type of fight had broken out by the jukebox, and Elsa watched as a gargantuan man dressed in black leather lifted the troublemakers up off the ground and walked them to the exit.

They reached the back wall and stopped, confused. The waiter pulled back a heavy blue curtain, revealing a doorway. A cool blast of lightly perfumed air came from the second, larger chamber hidden behind the curtain.

"Because no one believed us when we called it The Swan."

* * *

Okay, she'd been a little worried when she first saw the place, because how was she going to turn this free dinner into a date if they spent the whole time listening to karaoke metal music?

Sitting here at the table covered by a white tablecloth, listening to light jazz, smelling fresh bread mixed with lavender from a bouquet serving as the table's centerpiece, and watching Elsa close her eyes and tilt her head back to take in the atmosphere had Anna thinking a little differently.

"May I take your order, ladies?"

Anna ordered filet mignon with a baked potato and braised asparagus, because she'd never had either filet mignon or anything braised before, and she wanted the potato as a backup plan.

Elsa ordered her meal haltingly, pausing every few words to glance at Anna with trepidation, as though she might find Elsa's grilled Tilapia with soup and a side salad offensive.

Because Anna loved to try new things, she ordered a glass of their house red to go with her steak. And because she lived for expanding the horizons of others, she ordered the house white, intending to give it to Elsa to drink with her meal. She didn't notice Elsa's disbelieving look as she ordered the two glasses of wine.

The waiter left.

"So, Elsa, what do you like to do for fun?"

"Oh, I love to ride my Dixie la- I love to wander around the grounds where I live, look at all the, um, flowers and such. I also dance, but you know that, and I play the piano."

"You have a Dixie Chopper?" Anna had seen a Dixie Chopper motorcycle once at a convention. She hadn't known anything about motorcycles at the time, but Kristoff had implied they were fairly unique, something about using a modified engine, and she hadn't found the company online, so they had probably gone out of business. Still, Elsa rode a motorcycle! Yes!

"Yes! You, uh, know what that is?" Now she was turning red for some reason.

"I saw one once. I have a Yamaha V Star 250 named Joan! I ride her everywhere, except when I need to go somewhere farther away, then I take Kristoff's Harley Sven, or like today Pabbie gave me a ride in his car so I wouldn't be all dirty for the meeting." Elsa was looking at her funny. Had she just muttered something about blades? What?

"I have the newest Dixie model, the XCaliber. It doesn't do very well on roads."

That didn't sound right. Anna recalled a conversation she'd had with Hans early in their relationship. She'd started talking about Joan and Hans had jumped into her motorcycle rant enthusiastically. Their likes and dislikes had synchronized so perfectly she'd been smitten. But he'd always come up with excuses when she asked to see his bike. Later on she found out Hans hadn't ever even ridden a motorcycle; he'd lied to keep her attention.

How could she have the latest model of something from a company that no longer existed, and how could a motorcycle not do well on roads?

Suddenly having a little less fun, Anna opened her mouth to ask Elsa for some clarification.

"Ladies, your dinner."

* * *

Elsa was out of her element. From the moment Anna had stepped into her life, she felt like she was tripping over her feet to keep up with her. Before she'd found the woman ebullient and charming, but this evening was painting her in a somewhat more dangerous light.

Maybe what Elsa had mistaken for a vivacious spirit was actually a reckless one? Elsa didn't know what a Yamaha looked like, but she couldn't imagine any lawnmower safe enough to drive through town. And drinking two glasses of wine at once! They were even two different colors, though Elsa didn't know if that meant anything. She'd never spent any amount of time around alcohol. Was Anna an alcoholic? Probably not, she hadn't even touched the second glass, but still.

Elsa considered that Anna might be too much for her to handle.

Her hands twisted together under the table as she recalled conversations she'd had with her father as a child. He'd done his best to turn her into a sophisticated young woman, but she was ever coming to the dinner table with dirt under her nails, ruining her dresses playing with the neighborhood dogs, and tracking mud in from outside. Powerless to change her unladylike behaviors, he gave up and resigned himself to helping her hide them. She wore gloves to hide her nails, changed before going out, and never went anywhere near dirt when around others. Dirt gravitated toward her like iron shavings to a magnet.

If Elsa tried to get to know her better, Anna's free spirit threatened to reveal every failing Elsa's father so wanted her to conceal. Those failings that led her here in the first place.

Or, she could work harder than ever before to hide them. Being able to spend time with someone like Anna was an incentive like no other, and stronger incentives yielded better results, surely?

"So you must really like to get dirty then, huh?" What? Elsa tried to process Anna's question, but no acceptable answer came forth. Yes? No, but I can't help it? What is this dirt that you speak of?

"What?" She managed.

"If you don't ride your Dixie on roads, you must ride it off-road. That's a dirty business, off-roading, especially on something as nice as a Dixie." Anna was staring intently at her, a measuring look on her face. How Elsa answered this question mattered, clearly.

Not that she could think of any good answers. She flashed back to her first year of high school, late to class on the first day because a swarm of bees had been migrating, building a new hive in a tree on the edge of campus, and she'd had to get a closer view. The teacher asked what on earth she'd been doing to have so many twigs in her hair. He hadn't liked her response, but the rest of the class had. Twig-head, bee-brain, the nicknames had been endless. She'd learned never to admit to doing anything less than ladylike, to being anything less than the perfect girl.

"I ah, well maybe I don't ride so much as I… do other things. Important, technical things I'm sure you wouldn't understand." Oh, that was not the right answer.

Anna's eyes flashed and her face grew hard.

"You might be surprised by what I understand, Elsa. Why don't you explain it to me? Then again, I'm only in my first year of grad school for mechanical engineering, after finishing my bachelors in three years. But maybe you're right. Try me."

Elsa, in the middle of trying to backtrack and word an apology, stopped. She flushed darkly. She'd never finished college, had dropped out shortly before moving here because she was miserable trapped in that tiny dorm room in the inner city. The enclosed space, dusty and dark, had given her panic attacks, had made her sick. That didn't make her any less intelligent than someone with a degree. All the hiding, the disappointment, the name-calling, the running away, boiled up in her at that moment. She was never going to be the sort of person Anna, or anyone else for that matter, might want, so what was the point of trying?

"I'd rather not."

* * *

"Check please."

Dismayed, Anna watched Elsa ask for a box and the check, forgetting the meal had been taken care of already. How had things gone wrong so quickly? She watched Elsa stand and stride away so fast she was nearly running. Was she just going to let Elsa go? Belatedly, Anna went after her.

She caught up with Elsa outside the restaurant. Elsa tripped on the porch steps and started to fall, so Anna reached out a hand to catch her. Elsa took her hand but continued falling until she twisted around under Anna's arm. The twist combined with the momentum of her fall spun her back into Anna's arms, which closed around her.

Blue eyes met bluer ones, confusion met pain, suspicion, fear. Anna broke first.

"Why did you lie about riding a motorcycle?" There was a moment of silence.

"What? When did we talk about motorcycles?"

"Your Dixie. You said you had a Dixie motorcycle."

"I don't have a motorcycle." Elsa looked down, her shoulders slumped. "I have a lawnmower. I ride it across the grounds at Arendelle castle, where I live and work. I'm a groundskeeper with a fancy side-job and an impressive pedigree."

"You didn't- you didn't lie? But Elsa, why wouldn't you just say that? I thought you were hiding something terrible."

"How could I say that? You ride lawnmowers through town and drink two glasses of wine with dinner. You're charming, graceful, friendly, gorgeous, and I… I didn't want to drive you away."

"I do what? How can you ride a lawnmower in town? That's crazy! Oh!" Anna groaned. "The second glass of wine was for you! I was gonna be all suave, talk about how white wine complements lighter dishes like fish and salad. Jeez, what you must think of me." She paused.

"But you don't. Think badly of me, I mean. Elsa, I _like_ you, when I'm not worrying about you being a secret rotten sideburn-sporting liar, um," She glanced at Elsa's befuddled expression, "Never mind. What I'm trying to say is that you don't have to protect me from you, all I want is for us to be honest and real with each other."

They stood together on the wide porch of The Ugly Duckling, surrounded by wooden rocking chairs. Anna still awkwardly held Elsa with one arm; the other remained tangled with Elsa's hand down at their sides. Inside, someone picked a song from the jukebox that wasn't heavy metal. She couldn't make out the words, but the bass came through softly, a slow steady beat.

"Elsa?" She moved the arm holding the blonde down to her waist, and brought their clasped hand up. "Dance with me?"

* * *

AN: Okay! We have part one of their date-type thing. This story should have been half over by now, but it's getting longer, so next up is part two of their evening. Also Olaf.


	5. The Date pt II

Chapter Five: The Date pt. II

* * *

_They stood together on the wide porch of The Ugly Duckling, surrounded by wooden rocking chairs. Anna still awkwardly held Elsa with one arm; the other remained tangled with Elsa's hand down at their sides. Inside, someone picked a song from the jukebox that wasn't heavy metal. She couldn't make out the words, but the bass came through softly, a slow steady beat._

"_Elsa?" She moved the arm holding the blonde down to her waist, and brought their clasped hands up. "Dance with me?"_

* * *

They moved slowly together. Anna led, her arms firmly guiding Elsa back into a slow rotation around the porch, their dance floor.

"Can we start over?" Elsa asked softly.

Anna, thinking she was talking about their waltz, started to stop.

"Not the dance," Elsa ducked her head and smiled softly at Anna, "Please. This is… wonderful. I meant the evening."

They kept turning. "Sounds good to me. Hi, I'm Anna. You're a beautiful dancer." Elsa beamed.

"I'm Elsa. Thank you, my father dances, and I've spent my whole life learning from him. It's nice to just… dance because it's fun, and not because I have to."

The song ended, but they kept moving. Anna led Elsa into a slow spin, blushing as the dancer draped both hands loosely over Anna's shoulders. She moved both hands to Elsa's waist.

"Well there's not much you have to do with me, just showing up is usually good."

"I'll do that. Is there anything else I should be doing, could be doing?"

"Just don't… shut me out. My, um," Anna broke eye contact and Elsa felt the loss keenly.

"My ex-boyfriend lied about who he was from the day we met. I fell for it, believed every rotten lie he said, and now I'm a little less. Less trusting, I guess, than I used to be." Elsa nodded.

"I'm so sorry, Anna. My avoidance can't have helped that."

They stood still now, feet unmoving though their bodies still swayed slightly back and forth. Anna's gaze flickered from Elsa's eyes, to the sheen of perspiration covering her neck, to the faint flutter of Elsa's carotid artery pulsing in time with her heartbeat.

Elsa smelled _so_ good, a mix of lavender from the restaurant, her own personal scent, and something she now recognized as freshly cut grass. Anna leaned in closer and took a deep breath in through her nose, right under Elsa's ear. She smirked as the blonde's breath hitched. Now Anna pulled back 'til she and Elsa were face to face, breath comingling. Elsa's eyes were wide, her breaths coming in quick pants. Anna tilted her head, eyes briefly focusing on something white over Elsa shoulder before they started closing as she…

"Omigosh look at the kitty!" Anna descended the porch steps and was halfway across the parking lot before her brain caught up with her body, and she realized that she'd ruined her chance of kissing Elsa to chase after a cat. Gosh darn it.

She turned back to Elsa, who was standing where Anna had left her, arms outstretched as though they'd tried to hold Anna back, an expression of deep puzzlement on her face. Elsa blinked.

"C-cat? What?" She stumbled down the steps after Anna, the puzzled expression remaining until she saw what Anna had.

"Oh! Why hello there."

A cat, light gray with an orange patch on its face and three black patches on its body, lay curled up underneath Elsa's Honda. When Elsa spoke, it opened dark eyes and stretched luxuriously, then meowed and threw itself against her ankles, winding its way between them in a desperate plea for attention.

Anna crouched down and began petting the cat, who transferred its affections to her, purring violently.

"Aww, he's so cute! Where do you think he came from?"

Elsa noted that the cat's fur should have been snow white rather than light gray, and was that… yes, it had fleas, and the cat's ribs showed through its fur.

"He's probably a stray. I don't think he'd be so skinny if there were someone feeding him."

"That's so sad. Poor guy." Anna busied herself petting the cat more vigorously, trying to make up for his apparent neglect with a surfeit of attention. She didn't notice when Elsa bent down and set something on the ground, but looked up when the cat suddenly abandoned her.

"Huh?"

A Styrofoam takeout container hid the cat's face as it scarfed the leftover grilled Tilapia from Elsa's dinner. Anna looked up to see Elsa shrug sheepishly.

"He looks too thin."

Anna jumped up and crushed Elsa in a hug.

"You're amazing, Elsa."

The cat finished eating and sat up, cleaning its face with its paw.

"So, what are you going to name him?" Elsa asked.

"Name him?"

"I can tell you want to keep him." Indeed, Anna had barely looked away from the cat once she found him.

"I do, keeping him would be just so awesome, but that's probably not possible. I mean, I'd have to get permission from my landlord, and from Kristoff, and buy all sorts of supplies, and where could he stay while I got all that? Then there's the vet, do we even have a vet in Arendelle? And…"

"Would it help if I held onto him? Just for a while, until you have things settled at home. I'm sure Marshmallow wouldn't mind, or well, I'm sure I can keep Marshmallow and he separated. You could come by my place to get him when you're ready."

Anna didn't ask who Marshmallow was; she was too busy squishing Elsa in another hug, this one longer and tighter than the first. Elsa squeaked.

"I think I'll name him Olaf. He looks like an Olaf, doesn't he?"

Elsa crouched down and pet the cat lightly on the head, then picked him up and stood so the cat faced Anna, paws out straight in front of him. In as deep a voice as she could manage, Elsa gruffed out "Hi, I'm Olaf and I like warm hugs!"

Olaf was exceptionally laid back about Elsa's manhandling, and allowed himself to be carried thusly with no protests over a few plaintive meows. He let Anna scoop him from Elsa's arms into her own, and remained there for the entire drive back to Anna's apartment.

They left Olaf in the car while Elsa escorted Anna to her apartment door.

"I had a good time tonight."

"I did, too. I hope we can, well I'd like it if we could, perhaps, do this again? Not The Ugly Duckling, but the da…" A horrible thought struck Elsa.

"This was a date, wasn't it? If it wasn't please forget I said anything, oh _dear_…"

A finger against her lips stopped Elsa from digging herself a deeper hole.

"It was a date. It didn't really start as one but I was hoping it would end as one, and since you brought it up, yes this was definitely a date. Also, you already asked me on a second one."

A beat. Elsa spoke around Anna's finger.

"I did?"

"Yup! You said I could pick Olaf up from your place when I'm ready. You, me, spending time together, sounds like a date to me."

"I did?"

"Yes, you did."

"I asked you out?" Anna started to feel a little nervous. Maybe Elsa hadn't wanted to ask her out, and Anna was overstepping.

"Er, well, I thought…"

"And you said yes?"

"Um…"

"Yes!" Elsa pumped her fist in the air. "I rock!"

Anna snorted. When Elsa finished celebrating, she bade Anna goodnight. Anna turned toward her, eyes already half closed as she sought out Elsa's lips.

Elsa stepped back, opened the door to Anna's apartment, and pushed her gently through.

"Until next time, Anna," She closed the door. Anna blinked.

"Wait, what?"


	6. Marshmallow Attack

"_Until next time, Anna," She closed the door. Anna blinked. _

"_Wait, what?"_

* * *

Elsa hummed Tchaikovsky's "The Sleeping Beauty" overture, which involved less humming and more creating the sounds of an entire orchestra, including the drums, with her mouth. "Ba da da, ba-da ba-da ba-da!" Her hands moved rhythmically as she danced around the kitchen, feet moving smoothly through the various positions as Elsa picked and chose selections of choreography from a vaguely remembered ballet performance.

Gradually, finished foodstuffs assembled on the counter: cucumber sandwiches, chicken salad, hard-boiled eggs, apples, pears, peaches, and apricots, a bottle of sparkling lemonade, and another of chilled chamomile tea with honey. Elsa lined a wicker basket with a tablecloth and packed them all inside, with just enough space left for a box of chocolate-coated strawberries.

She'd never had chocolate-coated strawberries before, or cucumber sandwiches, but she'd gotten a list of ideal picnic foods from the internet and refused to deviate from it. Elsa tucked plates, cups, napkins and silverware into the sides and corners of the basket, and took the completed assemblage outside, where she strapped it to the back of her lawnmower.

She was going all-out; she'd taken Anna's words to heart and wanted this date to be both romantic, and completely honest and open. By the end of it, Anna should recognize Elsa as either unworthy of pursuit, or as her potential soulmate.

She very much hoped Anna would choose the latter option, hence the going all out.

Elsa remembered one of the few lectures her father gave her on romance, back in the seventh grade.

Elsa had been reading _Romeo and Juliet_ for class. She'd been one of the few sheltered souls to not know how the play ended, and had just finished the first act. She gushed to her father about how Romeo and Juliet had fallen in love at first sight, and kissed at their first meeting.

Her father snapped the play from her hands and shook it. "Any relationship where they kiss before the third date is doomed to fail," he said.

Surely that couldn't be true, Elsa thought. She spent the entire weekend working her way through the dense prose, only to find that the love-struck teenagers died tragically in a contrived mess.

She'd been very upset.

"I told you something terrible would happen," Her father patted the sobbing pre-teen girl's back gently. "The great poet Alexander Pope once wrote 'Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,' don't rush something good, take your time to build a solid foundation."

It hadn't taken Elsa long to recover, but she still took her father's lesson to heart.

Elsa had committed to pursuing Anna that night at the young woman's apartment, when she'd kindly dealt with Elsa's exuberant celebration over accidentally having enough game to ask out the most amazing girl she'd ever met. She'd committed only moments before facing the sweetest temptation ever; Anna's face, eyes hooded, lips upturned, seeking out hers for a goodnight kiss. The dancer had barely managed to avoid it.

But in the light of day it should be much easier to romance Anna without getting too close.

She looked at her watch; Anna would be by in two hours, it was time for Marshmallow's bath.

* * *

Anna used headphones to dull the sound of the air compressor as she worked. It roared in the background as she dismantled Joan's air filter and used the compressor to blow the filter free of dirt and debris. She reassembled the air filter, topped off Joan's tires, then turned off the compressor and grabbed a soft cloth and some wax spray. It wouldn't do for Joan to look anything less than perfect when Anna rode the motorcycle to her date with Elsa.

She stepped back to look at Joan's newest modification; the stainless steel pet carrier she'd gotten off eBay made her Yamaha 250 look much more like a cruiser than it really was. Anna had ordered the carrier on the day after her first date with Elsa, and in the week before it arrived Anna had gotten everything ready for Olaf's arrival.

Her landlord Mr. Weselton had been ecstatic about the additional fees associated with pet ownership Anna now owed him every month. Kristoff thought cats were weird, but with him weird was a good thing. The apartment was bedecked with cat toys, the kitchen counter with food dishes. She had a litter box and the phone number to the vet was written on the mirror in her bedroom, which already had so many phone numbers on it she used the bathroom mirror for putting on makeup.

Anna looked down at her cell phone to check the time; there was still an hour before she had to be at Elsa's, but getting lost would be terrible, and she hadn't been to Arendelle Castle since her class toured it back in fourth grade. Maybe she should leave a little early.

* * *

Okay, apparently the castle was only fifteen minutes from Anna's apartment, but being forty-five minutes early for their date wasn't awful, was it? Anna rode up to the front gate. It was a great big wrought iron contraption with an electric keypad on the left for people to punch the passcode into. The gate was closed, but a laminated sheet of paper hanging from it gave the passcode in bold handwritten script.

Anna punched in the code and walked her motorcycle through the gate, which opened automatically. It closed behind her as she started her way up the cobblestone path. What was the point of having a gate if anyone who could read could open it?

Something white was coming toward her from the castle. It couldn't be Olaf, it was too fast… and too big… and Olaf wasn't a great white bear trailing soap bubbles behind it.

Anna had time to stop and dismount Joan before the bear ran full tilt into her, throwing her off the path and onto the grass. Terrified, Anna brought her hands up to cover her face and tried to remember that one lesson she'd had on surviving a bear attack. She stiffened up and pretended to be a log. If it started eating her she needed to run, but otherwise this was good. The bear was doing something, she couldn't tell what though.

After a minute she peeked one eye open and peered through a gap in her fingers. Every bit of her was soaked from the water streaming off the bear, except for the part of her arms that covered her face, which was covered in slobber. The bear lay next to Anna with one paw on her stomach, its face nudging something gold-colored that squeaked into her neck. The bear… was a dog. The biggest, grossest dog with the most terrible breath she'd ever seen or smelled.

At least he wasn't going to eat her.

Anna stood and shook her finger at the dog. "It is not nice to throw people!" The dog whuffed at her and rolled onto his back, begging for a belly rub.

"Not a chance, mister. Look at what you did!" Anna's dark green jeans didn't really look so bad, in fact the water just made them look that much more skintight and curve-hugging, but her ruffled yellow blouse was trashed, and the dog's drool acted like hair gel in her tangled locks, making them stick out at ridiculous angles.

"You need to go back where you came from right now, and I need to change. Maybe I have time? I still have time. Right, bye dog!"

Anna turned to grab Joan and leave, only to have the dog, now covered in dirt and leaves that stuck to his wet fur, flop down in front of the motorcycle. Then she heard Elsa call from somewhere behind her.

"Marshmallow! Marshmallow, kommer hit!"

Oh. _Oh_.

"You're Marshmallow? The one Elsa said she could keep Olaf separated from?" Anna tried to picture Elsa with this behemoth as a pet, but all she could come up with was either a picture of Elsa riding him like an elf from _The Hobbit_, hair flying in the wind, or Elsa laying on a big dog-skinned rug in front of a fireplace, wearing nothing but a…

A-_hem_. Anyway.

"Alright buster, let's get you home to mama." Anna reached out and dug at the fur of the dog's neck until she found a collar buried beneath it all. She grabbed the collar and started dragging him toward the castle. "Elsa! Over here, I've got him!" Anna waved her hand as Elsa came into view.

Elsa ran toward them, gown flapping behind her. Gown? Why was Elsa wearing a gown, their date wasn't supposed to be fancy. The gown was light blue, and rather fuzzy looking, and it had big squared off pockets in the front, and loops sewn to the outside to hold the matching fuzzy blue belt…

Elsa, clad in her terrycloth bathrobe, finally reached Anna.

"I'm so sorry miss, he got away from me. Here, I'll take him." Elsa reached out to grab Marshmallow's collar. "Marshmallow, hæl!" Elsa's face was bright red as she did her best to take the dog without looking at whoever had him.

"Elsa," the hand pulling at Marshmallow's collar froze. Anna heard her chanting

"Please no, please no, oh please no," softly under her breath. Elsa looked up. "Anna?"

The girls stared at each other in dismay. Anna in her sopping bedraggled date clothes, Elsa in her pre-date bathrobe. They both looked down at Marshmallow, who barked joyfully.

"Woof."

* * *

AN: Something will eventually go right for them, really! I'm hoping this wasn't too terrible cheesy.

Also, in case anyone was confused by the random Norwegian words Elsa's speaking, it's a thing in some places to train a dog to obey commands in a non-native language so he doesn't get confused by ordinary conversation. When I was given/adopted my dog he only knew Romanian. It was kinda cool except I didn't speak any Romanian.

Anyway, thanks so much for all of your follows, favorites, and reviews! It's really cool to think that other people want to read about this pair of adorably awkward gals.

Next time: We meet Anna's mother! Sort of.


	7. Dancing Around the Issue

Chapter Seven: Dancing around the Issue

* * *

_The girls stared at each other in dismay. Anna in her sopping bedraggled date clothes, Elsa in her pre-date bathrobe. They both looked down at Marshmallow, who panted joyfully._

_Woof._

* * *

Elsa's bedroom was huge.

Which made sense, seeing as it had been the master bedroom for the owner of a castle. Still, Anna couldn't get over the geometric patterns crafted into the arched roof, or the wall-to-wall North-facing windows, or that if someone were to ice over the sky-blue carpet covering most of the room they could use it as a skating rink.

Not that Anna would ever consider such a thing. As a child she had certainly never poured water on her bedroom floor in the winter, leaving the window open in hopes of creating an indoor skating rink. Nope.

Most of the room was light and airy, colored in creams, pale blues, and white. The one exception was the corner nearest the door, which had a red rug and a loveseat, facing a gigantic fireplace. From it wafted the scent of cedar and sweetgrass, and Anna could see a basket of sticks and braided grasses next to the fireplace, waiting their turn to fill the room with scent.

Opposite the fireplace, Elsa's closet was an old-fashioned wardrobe shoved up against the same wall as her enormous king-sized bed. The doors hung off it, unable to close due to an explosion of unfolded clothing spilling out from within the wooden chamber. Anna stepped closer and picked up a pair of denim coveralls from where they'd fallen on the ground. They looked fairly new, but were already stained permanently green at the knees.

Next to the overflowing wardrobe was a much neater clothing rack, on which hung outfit after elegant outfit. Gowns, suits, a traditional pink tutu with zillions of ruffles, a slinky red dress covered in sequins, and more. A pair of matching gloves accompanied each set of clothing, except for the one at the end, which Anna recognized as the patterned black outfit Elsa wore to the festival when they first met.

They were for dancing, Anna realized. Elsa had clearly separated all her clothing into two sections, dancing Elsa and real Elsa. She turned back to the wardrobe, intent on snooping through it to uncover what Elsa's clothes said about her personality.

"Did you find anything?" Whoops. Supposedly Anna was changing into dry clothes after being soaked by Marshmallow.

"Uh, yeah! One second!" Anna laboriously peeled off her jeans and pulled on the first bottoms she found- Elsa's grass stained coveralls. She whipped off her sodden yellow blouse and replaced it with a pale blue button-up trimmed in navy, also grabbed from the disorderly wardrobe. Wincing slightly at her reflection, shown by a freestanding wood-bound mirror in the corner, she fastened the coverall's suspender straps and made her way to the door.

She pulled it wide, greeted by the sight of Elsa, still in her bathrobe, which Anna took a moment to appreciate, though she noted with some disappointment that the blonde wore a modest black t-shirt beneath the enticing garment.

Elsa's eyes were focused several inches away from Anna's eyes, and for a moment she thought the blonde might be checking her out- until the upward tilt of Elsa's face combined with the slight look of horror reminded Anna that her hair currently belonged on the Bride of Frankenstein.

"So, you go change, and I'll deal with…" she gestures at the 3rd grade solar system science project level of disaster orbiting her head, "all this. Point me to a bathroom?"

Elsa wordlessly led her down the hall, her daunted expression shifting to amusement as she watched Anna pull and pat at her hair.

"I'll be right back," She promised.

With the aid of a brush, a comb, two hair-ties and some water Anna tamed her hair into a pair of braids.

She stepped out of the bathroom just in time to watch Elsa striding toward her in a white cotton sundress, hair loose and flowing as she tied it back with a ribbon the same color as her eyes.

"Woah."

Elsa stopped when she reached Anna, and the two spent a long moment taking each other in. For Anna, this was her first time seeing Elsa in a dress; the garment made her look softer, younger somehow. It brought out the pale yellow highlights in her hair, and called attention to the faint freckles dotting across Elsa's face.

Elsa, meanwhile, could not get over how fantastic Anna looked in _her_ clothes, how seeing her in those clothes made her feel. The coveralls were slightly too long for Anna, their leg cuffs dragging over the redhead's feet, and the cotton button-up was one of Elsa's favorite shirts. The outfit, together with the girl's pigtails, made her look like she'd just come inside after a day doing yard work. This endeared her all the more to Elsa, who took it as a sign that this amazing, motorcycle-riding graduate student might just fit into her life.

"So, uh, what are we doing?"

"…Hmn? Oh, right. Well, I was thinking… come with me." Elsa reached out and grabbed Anna's hands, pulling her down the hall. As they moved Elsa provided a ten-second tour. "That's the guest room, where Olaf's staying," She pointed to a nondescript white door, "And that's Marshmallow's room." Another closed door, this one decorated with chalk, depicting a snowy mountain scene and the words 'Marshmallow's Room'. "Here's the kitchen."

Anna stumbled after her through the kitchen, nearly falling when she tried to stop because hey, Elsa's kitchen probably has tons to say about her. Is she a take-out person or a homemade meals person? Does she eat vegetables? Oh, what if she eats marmite? Anna might not be able to kiss Elsa if the woman ate marmite, she couldn't stand the stuff.

Then they were past the kitchen and headed outside. There, standing on the grass, was Elsa's Dixie Chopper.

Anna kinda thought it looked like a giant beetle. The lawn mower was big, roughly square, with a beige seat perched at its center; the two levers that controlled each side of the mower stuck out above it like the jaws on an angry black beetle trying to escape from a jar. A large wicker basket was secured to the back of the seat.

"I thought, for our date, you might enjoy going on a picnic?" Elsa released Anna's hands, opting instead to fiddle with the ends of her hair while she waited for Anna's reaction.

* * *

This was gonna be the greatest date ever! They'd given up on riding the lawnmower together. It'd been romantic in the 80s teen comedy _Can't Buy Me Love_, but not so much with the Dixie's small, high-backed seat. Anna could see the moment Elsa realized her mistake, cheeks flushing and shoulders raising to ward off ridicule, so she'd been quick to suggest they carry the basket out together.

Elsa on the left, Anna on the right, the basket swinging between them, they meandered toward the duck pond.

"Oh, growing up with my mom was a real adventure, one that hasn't ended yet!" Anna answered the hesitantly asked, "What was your family like growing up?"

"She teaches Physics and Computer Science at the high-school, and ever since I was tiny we'd go on trips in the summer. Camping in National forests, road-tripping across the country, Ooh, we spent a summer with one of her friends up in Nunavut, Canada once. We built an igloo, but I only got to sleep in it for one night before it started melting."

"It was just you and your mom, then?"

"Well I mean yeah, though I think there might have been someone else really early on. I had this dream that I got kissed by a troll and I've never thought of my mom as a troll before, so maybe there was someone. But it's just been us, and my aunt Gerda and my grandparents, for as long as I can remember." They walk in silence for a while, enjoying the warm summer breeze.

"It's just my father and me, too. My parents were both dancers, and my mother didn't want to give up her shot at a professional dancing career to be part of a family. Father started teaching to support us." Elsa smiled at Anna's raised eyebrow, and the way she glanced at the gigantic castle behind them. "The castle has been passed down through our family since the beginning, but it's not exactly a… a cash cow. Despite our lofty origins, we Arendelles still need to earn a living."

The pond came into view, a round body of water perhaps thirty feet across, with a thick ring of cattails running around it, Lilly pads and other water plants dotting its surface.

They spread the red and white checkered tablecloth at the highest point, so they could look down at the pond while they ate.

"So what's in the basket that's food?"

"Oh, well I have chicken salad, and boiled eggs, and cucumber-"

"Sandwiches, cool!" Anna reached out and plucked one of the delicate white bread treats out of Elsa's hand, eying its cool green filling briefly before cutting it in half with a big bite. She froze.

Marmite.

Elsa had definitely used marmite as the spread for the sandwiches.

"Bleck-umph, mn, 's really… salty?" Anna swallowed. "Good! I meant good! I really like the... I mean the... it's," Anna prepared to stuff the rest of the sandwich into her face, to get it over with, but it was plucked from her hand.

"It's okay if they're terrible, I've never made them before." Elsa took a small bite of the remaining half sandwich. Then another. It was good. She glanced back at Anna, who was discreetly trying to scrape her tongue on a napkin. Huh, there's no accounting for taste.

Anna had much better luck with the chicken salad, devouring it while Elsa slowly finished the sandwiches. Together they polished off the fruit and sparkling lemonade. As they ate Elsa would point out wildlife. She waved Anna over to look at a new dragonfly perched on a cattail frond, translucent wings still drying from its transformation from underwater nymph to adult.

When they returned to the picnic Anna took the opportunity to tuck herself right up against Elsa's side, snagging a chocolate-covered strawberry at the same time.

She brought it up to Elsa's lips, intent on turning the picnic into something a little more sensual.

"Here, try this, it looks _delicious_." Elsa stared at the berry, and the woman holding it, mesmerized. Anna moved the fruit a bit closer and watched with satisfaction as the blonde gulped, her tongue flicking out to moisten dry lips. The redhead grinned and moved the dessert forward, her head following closely to engage in a sweet, chocolaty first kiss.

Elsa threw herself backward, her foot catching on the hem of her dress, sending her into a sideways roll onto the grass. Her sudden motion caused Anna to lose her balance, which she regained by slamming the hand holding the chocolate-covered strawberry onto the ground, covering her fingers in chocolaty red pulp.

"Ew!"

"Sorry, I'm sorry, it's just that," Elsa never completed the sentence as she scrambled up, grabbing napkins to help clean Anna's hand. The redhead sat back as Elsa methodically wiped each finger, then her palm and the back of her hand with the napkin, moistened with condensation from a chilled bottle of tea. Once finished, Elsa twined her fingers between those of the thoroughly cleaned hand. She sheepishly shrugged her shoulders in a wordless apology for her awkwardness, and stood, tugging Anna up after her.

"Let's walk for a bit."

* * *

They strolled along the pond's edge, holding hands.

"What made you decide to study mechanical engineering?"

"Well, see, I've always like things that go fast. Bicycles, motorcycles, fast cars. I love tinkering with them, taking them apart and making them run better. Since my mom's a physics teacher that just kinda all snowballed, so now I'm on track to being a rocket scientist. Cool, huh?"

"Yes!"

They neared a grove of pine trees and Anna, struck by inspiration, pulled Elsa 'till they were walking through the coniferous woods. They neared a particularly large pine tree, and the redhead struck. She swung them around and gently pinned Elsa against the rough bark, her free hand above the blonde's head, their still entwined hands down at Elsa's side. She leaned in close.

"Hey Elsa?"

"A-Anna?"

"Wanna rev each other's engines?" Anna wiggled her eyebrows lasciviously.

Elsa's breath caught. Her face turned red. Anna was sure this was the moment.

"Snrk." Anna's eyebrows stopped their wiggling to furrow in confusion. That wasn't a sexy noise, it was a…

Elsa collapsed against the tree, laughing helplessly.

"Your, your eyebrows, oh…" Elsa laughed until tears ran from her eyes and she was out of breath.

Anna watched her bemusedly, then dropped down to join her.

"I, uh, I guess you don't want to, then." She tried not to sound too disappointed, but Elsa sobered up at hearing Anna's dejected tone.

"Anna, it's not that I don't want to, it's just too soon. We haven't even had our third date yet and I don't want to doom the relationship." A gust of cool, damp air blew over them. Anna blinked.

"Doom the relationship? By kissing?" The wind picked up as Elsa explained her traumatizing middle school experience with Romeo and Juliet, and her father's warning.

"So, what you're saying is that you're worried that if we kiss our families will find out and we'll end up dying in an angst ridden double suicide?"

"Prematurely, if we kiss prematurely. Also, in my head it wasn't a double suicide, just general doom and heartache."

Her fears seemed silly once spoken aloud, Elsa thought.

Anna, however, was busy putting all the pieces together. Someone who wanted a quick fling didn't care about ruining the relationship. A person who was too polite to outright say 'I'm not into you' wasn't worried about dooming their unwanted suitor's chances of success. If Elsa were trying to fake or force interest, dodging Anna's amorous advances was the worst technique ever.

"In retrospect, perhaps I could reconsider my position…"

"Maybe you've got a point with the whole waiting thing…"

"If you want to take this further, I'm not opposed…."

"I mean, this could be a really great thing we have here…"

They each trailed off into silence, the only sound a distant rumbling. Anna broke the quiet.

"Wait, what just happened?"

"I-I'm not su-" _Crash!_

The thunder broke over their heads, lightening flashing with it. Tapping sounds filled the air as the first raindrops fell onto leaves, shortly followed by the low rumble of a torrential downpour.

"Run!" Anna pulled Elsa up and together they dashed for the castle, leaving behind the sodden picnic still spread on the other side of the pond.

* * *

Alternately laughing, gasping, and screaming as the thunder sounded around them, the pair slammed breathlessly into the nearest castle wall, mostly protected from the weather by the wide, overhanging roof of a tower.

"Oh… my gosh… that… was crazy!" Anna gasped out, shaking her head to throw off some of the water streaming into her eyes.

"I think the nearest door is this way." Elsa tugged Anna's hand and started leading them along the castle wall, their path hugging it tightly to avoid the rain pouring down only inches away.

Less occupied with running, Anna noted how the weather had affected Elsa's white sundress. She saw a hint of pale blue around the blonde's shoulder blades before snapping her eyes up. Hey, was that a gargoyle on the end of that gutter?

"Ah, Elsa? Maybe I should lead. You just tell me where to go." Elsa turned around with eyebrow raised, but when she saw Anna's determined upward gaze she flushed.

"Oh. Um, yes that does sound… go ahead, Anna."

The nearest door was the castle's main entrance, where a bronze plaque declared the building the most historical building in the world, super important and not for climbing on, running through, or having any fun near, if Anna remembered her fourth grade tour correctly.

Fortunately, Elsa could open the massive door with a long code punched into a pad next to it. They tiptoed through the museum, wincing at the loud squeaks that echoed through the halls, emanating from their dripping shoes. Anna felt a thrill of troublemaking joy when they stepped over the heavy cord holding a sign saying Do Not Pass, to reach Elsa's part of the building.

This time neither of them bothered to change. Instead, Elsa tossed Anna a gigantic navy blue terrycloth robe adorned with gold crocuses. "It's my father's," she said as she donned the same light blue robe she'd worn earlier.

Anna got a more in-depth tour of Elsa's kitchen when they made hot chocolate the old-fashioned way, after Elsa frowned over an empty tin of instant. The blonde smiled indulgently as she called out directions to Anna, who went after the various ingredients.

"The whisk's in the third drawer down, next to the refrigerator. No, on the left. Your _left_, Anna. Oh, well that's the whisk, why was it in the drawer on the right?"

"I keep the vanilla in the top shelf, you'll need a chair… or jumping up onto the counter works."

"The Cocoa powder's in that cupboard by the stove, but don't ope…"

"It's only twelve boxes of chocolate, that's hardly an obsession, Anna, you don't need to call chocoholics anonymous. Stop _laughing_ at me!"

They took turns stirring the mixture of unsweetened chocolate, milk, sugar and vanilla until it heated through, then poured the concoction into mugs and drank it on a window seat, looking out at the storm.

The storm ended when their mugs were empty of all but a dark ring of chocolate at the bottom, their clothes somewhat dried. Anna reluctantly changed back into her original date clothes, uncomfortably damp but no worse than what she was already wearing.

She collected Olaf, who looked much better for a few days in Elsa's care. He was clearly a white cat now, white with black and orange patches. He purred in Anna's arms, tail whipping out to tickle her cheek while Elsa walked them both out to the redhead's motorcycle. Anna tucked the cat securely into the machine's new pet carrier and turned to face Elsa.

"Well, I guess that's it then," Her feet shuffled uncomfortably, and she looked down at them. Goodbyes were awful. Another pair of shoes shuffled into sight, bumping gently into hers. Warmth in the shape of an arm wrapped around her shoulders, and she and Elsa were hugging. They hugged until Elsa pulled back, eyes searching Anna's intently.

Knowing what they were looking for, Anna smiled. "Nothing bad's gonna happen Elsa, it's okay."

Elsa nodded faintly, her arm trailing up Anna's shoulder to her neck, then coming down to cup her jaw. Tingles broke out across every inch of Anna's skin as Elsa leaned forward.

She paused, a mere centimeter away from the redhead, for long enough that Anna opened her eyes to see what was wrong. She closed them again when Elsa brought their lips together, holding them steady, connected to each other for a full second before drawing back.

When Anna looked up at Elsa several long moments later the blonde's eyes were shining, teeth flashing in a huge grin that contrasted starkly with her skin, flushed bright red in a full-body blush.

Something loud buzzed from Anna's motorcycle and it was her turn to blush as she reached over and grabbed her cell phone.

"Hi?"

"Mom, hi! Yeah, no I'm doing great," She grinned at Elsa, "better than great, actually, like mad super fantastic."

"You're visiting! When? Tomorrow? In a _motorhome_? Where did you… Aunt Gerda? But I live in an apartment, where will you park… but…" Anna deflated. "I mean you can't park at my place but I'm sure there's somewhere, you don't have to park all the way out there."

Elsa could follow the conversation well enough to know what the problem was, and how to solve it.

"She can park here, at the castle." She blurted out. Anna looked up.

"One second, Mom," She took the phone away from her ear.

"Elsa that's a terrible idea, have you met my mom? She's like me but with a permanent caffeine high and no sense of personal space! If she parks here she'll be in there eating breakfast with you and joining all the tours to teach people about the physics behind building arches and you'll never want to go on another date with me again!"

From Elsa's wide eyes Anna could tell she'd sufficiently warned the blonde off. Unfortunately she'd also been a little loud. She put her cell back to her ear. And paled.

"Girlfriend? What makes you think that…" Anna went beet red. "NO! No, we're not doing that." She glances at Elsa and away quickly. "Definitely not. Yet. Um. You heard that? Well she wasn't actually offer- wait no she's not okay with that. No you won't be here by noon- here's castle Arendelle, what other castle is there- you'll be somewhere else. Mom? Mom?!"

Anna put her cell phone away and looked bleakly over at Elsa. "She'll be at the castle by noon tomorrow."

* * *

AN: So are they doomed? Maybe so, maybe not. Next chapter (assuming it goes how it's supposed to): We meet Anna's mother _officially, _and castle Arendelle has a surprise guest.


	8. Two Steps Forward

_Anna put her cell phone away and looked bleakly over at Elsa. "She'll be at the castle by noon tomorrow."_

* * *

In Elsa's first year of high-school her grandfather gave her an heirloom alarm clock, brass-bound with a key that needed turning every night. Every morning of her freshman year the metal clap hit against the two round bells forcefully enough to rouse not only Elsa, but also her father, who once awake, would groan and rise to greet the day with his daughter.

The quiet mornings got to be too much for Elsa's ever-busy father, so he took to making lunches for himself and Elsa. He purchased recipe books on healthy eating and designer lunches to further expand his lunch-making knowledge. After months of kale turkey wraps, blueberry spinach smoothies, homemade sushi and other very creative, semi-edible lunches, Elsa started looking for ways to stop the torture without hurting her father's feelings.

* * *

The morning after her date with Anna, Elsa rolled out of bed at 6:59:50, just in time to switch off her alarm before it sounded. Old habits die hard. She stood and blinked unseeingly at her mirror for a minute, then another. After several more moments of zombie-like catatonia she remembered why she'd bothered to set her alarm on the weekend.

"Anna's mother's coming!" Elsa jumped to her wardrobe and pulled out the first two pieces she found- jeans and a t-shirt advertising her high-school dance team. She threw them back into the wooden box.

Her next outfit was a light green polo shirt with tan slacks. She stared at it for a moment and tried to picture how meeting Anna's mother might go in this particular outfit.

She didn't know what the woman looked like, and staring at the green polo all Elsa could think was that it was the same color green as Kermit the Frog. She conjured up a picture of Kermit singing to Miss Piggy, the furry red drummer Animal playing in the background, chains rattling. Instantly her brain put herself and Anna into the image, a green-skinned Elsa singing to the pink and somehow blonde Anna while Anna's mom watched and played the drums disapprovingly.

Elsa flinched and threw the ensemble back into the wardrobe.

By the time she finally decided on a pair of white jeans with a light blue sweater she was running late, and hurried to grab a bowl of cereal and a banana before fixing her hair and rushing out the door.

In her hurry Elsa skipped the part of her morning routine where she marked an 'x' through the date on an old-fashioned wall calendar. If she'd looked at it, the blonde would have noticed the bright red letters neatly printed across the tiny box: _Father visiting today_.

* * *

Elsa's silver Honda pulled into the visitor parking spot for Anna's apartment complex at 10:00. She and Anna wanted a little time alone before the redhead's mother arrived. Anna wasn't outside waiting so Elsa got out and went up the stairs to get her.

It was their third date, and Elsa couldn't help but grin and blush as she recalled yesterday's kiss, earning her an odd look from one of Anna's neighbors, who wondered what drug the pale woman was on that made her clumsy enough to walk right into the stairwell doorjamb.

Ignoring the nosy neighbor and the bruise probably forming on her hip, Elsa's grin and confidence grew until she was giddily walking, almost skipping, up to Anna's door.

The friendliest, kindest, most beautiful girl ever was behind that door waiting for Elsa, and she wanted nothing more than to show that girl how much she appreciated her. Their kiss still featuring prominently in her brain, Elsa knocked on the door, bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet, hands clasping and unclasping nervously.

The door opened, the figure behind it obscured by the dim lighting of the hallway, and Elsa moved. One hand went to a cotton-covered shoulder, the other resting flat on Anna's chest. She surged up and gently pressed her soft, full lips against fuller ones. Fuller lips that were not very soft, and that she had to strain up to reach. Distantly Elsa noted that the hand clutching a shoulder was clutching rather more muscle than she'd thought Anna possessed. She reeled backward and the door swung the rest of the way open, revealing a stunned Kristoff.

The shaggy blond man stepped back, his face scrunching up, mouth and tongue moving like he wanted to spit something out.

"Blech! Why'd you- why'd you _do _that!"

"_Me_! Well, yes me, but- but I thought you were… but- Anna?"

"Gross, there's- you got lip-gloss on me." Kristoff wiped frantically at his mouth. "It tastes like fruity wax. I need to brush my teeth." The man paused his efforts to erase the girly taste and looked over at Elsa.

The blonde was breathing quickly, eyes wide, the blood drained from her face.

Recognizing a downward spiral of panic when he saw it, Kristoff gently placed his hands on Elsa's shoulders and made eye contact.

"Breathe, Elsa. Deep breaths." After another moment of hyperventilation, Elsa complied. "There, good! Now in a minute I'll get you some mouthwash and you can try that again, on the right person this time." After a few more guided breaths Elsa recovered enough to start thinking clearly again.

"Kristoff, I'm so sorry. That was completely inappropriate behavior on my part, and I" Kristoff shushed her.

"Hey, no harm done, it was an accident."

"What was an accident?"

The two blonds turned to look at the redhead. Anna leaned out of her open bedroom door, wet hair dripping onto the carpet and her red t-shirt as she took in the scene before her, Elsa crouched like a scared animal against the open doorway with Kristoff bending over her, holding the blonde's shoulders.

The pair straightened. Elsa took a deep breath, a sinking feeling in her gut telling her that it might be her last relatively happy one.

"I-"

"I opened the door and Elsa's face and mine collided. She got lip-gloss all over me!"

Anna squinted, and moved closer. Licking a thumb casually, she brought it to the whining man's face and swiped it across his lower lip, pulling the thumb back to examine it.

"Yup, lip-gloss. But it's not all over you, ya big baby. Go wash it off!" Her brow furrowed, and she turned as Kristoff shuffled off.

"How did you end up close enough to smash together like that?"

"I, ah, I forgot that Kristoff lived here. I thought it was you answering the door, and after yesterday ended so well I wanted to," Elsa's blue ballet flats shuffled back and forth as she drew her hands to her elbows, shoulders raised defensively.

A gleam of realization reached Anna's eyes, and Elsa suddenly found her clasped arms separated and wrapped around a warm and insistent torso.

"I see." Anna purred.

The blonde's heart stuttered, confronted by a wave of adrenaline coursing through her arteries, triggered by the full-body contact affronting Elsa's senses. Anna placed her bare toes over Elsa's flats, bumped the blonde's knees with her own, pressed every painfully warm inch of their thighs, stomachs and chests so tightly together that Elsa's breath hitched as her lungs tried to synchronize their movement with Anna.

"You aren't mad?"

"What? Mad that you wanted to kiss me so badly you got ahead of yourself and grossed out my roomie?" Anna's nose brushed against Elsa's chin and jaw, and the blonde leaned back slightly to look at her, then closed her eyes and inhaling deeply against wet curls. Caught in limbo between the overwhelming anxiety she'd been feeling and the sweet relief of forgiveness mixed with something infinitely _hotter_, Elsa's brain shut down as it tried to process. Several moments passed while Elsa simply breathed, taking in the clean scent of Anna's conditioner.

She gradually grew more aware of her surroundings, noting the subtle changes in her and Anna's embrace.

No longer filled with invisible heat, they were still wrapped in each other's arms, but now Anna's forehead lay against Elsa's shoulder, her arms holding the blonde loosely, rubbing tiny circles meant to soothe the high-strung woman.

She opened her eyes and looked down to see Anna smiling into her sweater. Anna noticed her gaze and moved back to look her in the eye.

"Hey."

"Hi."

Olaf, who'd been watching quietly from the kitchen counter, leapt silently down to the carpeted floor, choosing that moment to demand petting.

He curled around unsuspecting ankles, rumbling and leaning heavily into their calves. Close together and entwined as they were, the girls tipped, tried to untangle themselves and, when that failed, fell sideways to the ground.

"Huh-"

"Ah!"

The carpeted floor broke them apart, sending Anna and Elsa onto their backs. Olaf padded up Anna's stomach, perching heavily on her neck, batting her nose for attention. She obliged him, reaching up to scratch behind the cat's ear.

Elsa sat up and turned to watch Olaf arch against Anna's hand, purring to hard he started to drool.

"Anna, watch out, he's going to-" A drop landed on the redhead's cheek.

"Ew! Okay mister, time to get off." With a groan Anna rose, gently shoving the calico feline off her. She turned and held out a hand to Elsa, who took it, popping up with a dancer's grace to stand in front of the redhead.

"We should- we should probably go soon. Your mother doesn't know the code to the front gate and I don't want to chance her being stuck in the drive waiting for us."

"Right. Because that would be bad." Anna nodded and started waving her hands around in several directions, causing Elsa to cock her head to one side bemusedly. "Okay, let me grab my stuff from, uh, over here…" she lurched forward, making Elsa start backward, reaching out to grab a colorful cloth handbag from a hook by the door. Turning, she ran and scooped a wallet from the kitchen counter into the bag, then paused by the door to her room.

"Will, um, I mean after Mom's settled and stuff, will you be… What were your plans for today, before we Andersens swooped in and changed things?"

Elsa had no idea what her plans had been. She'd forgotten about everything in her rush to accommodate Anna's mother, to keep Anna from making the sad face she'd had yesterday while on the phone. She tried to remember.

"I think I was going to clean the castle. Just my part of it," She added at Anna's flabbergasted expression. "But I did that last night, just in case."

She'd woken up the night before, Anna's words about her mother dropping in for breakfast ringing through her mind, an ominous warning of things to come. Mopping floors and folding laundry at three a.m. was surprisingly relaxing.

"So, I don't- I don't think I have any plans?" She ended the remark with a question, because somewhere in the back of her head was a feeling that she was forgetting something. But what?

"Oh, well good! In that case let me just…" Anna disappeared into her room. Elsa could hear papers shuffling, and plastic hitting against wood and…

"I'm fine! My bowling ball fell off the dresser, but nothing broke!" She emerged, handbag noticeably fuller, and leaned against the doorframe while heaving a dramatic sigh, hand going to her forehead. "Whew! Okay, got everything. Let's go!"

* * *

AN: No Anna's mom this chapter. Instead, this happened.


End file.
